


The Golden Age

by God_Save_Our_Noble_Tea



Series: Cactus Juice for the Soul [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Cultural Differences, Dealing with the Third Shinobi War, Jinchuuriki-centric, Kazekage - Freeform, Land of Fire, Land of Wind, Multi, Or the Land of Fire, Politics, Racism, Self-Insert, Shinobi, Sunagakure - Freeform, Tailed Beasts, Tailed beasts are scary motherfuckers, There are more countries than just Fire country, Worldbuilding, lots of places, naruto - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 05:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11548773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/God_Save_Our_Noble_Tea/pseuds/God_Save_Our_Noble_Tea
Summary: All that is gold does not glitter,Not all those who wander are lost;The old that is strong does not wither,Deep roots are not reached by the frost.Sanghā thinks Tolkien was on something strong, because as far as she can tell, everything is glittering, she's very much lost and she just really wants to go home.





	The Golden Age

_I’m going to tell you a story. I’m not promising it will be a good one, but it means a lot to me, so I’m going to tell you about it anyway._

_This is **my** story. _

.

It’s an odd moment when you come to terms with your own mortality.

In a lot of TV, movies, hell, _fiction in general_ – it’s usually when the protagonist is inches from death. It’s typically a tense or heartfelt moment, where the villain has finally grasped the upper hand and holds everything the hero holds dear in their palm, poised to crush it all in a single blow. In the better stories, they use it to manipulate the hero, or their team into doing their dirty work for them, causing dissent from the inside. I always think that’s better writing, honestly - at least where building tension is involved, anyway. Where there are layers upon layers of work, where it’s not just hunky dory all the time. No obnoxious cheesy moments, but instead a thought out take on what might happen. I mean, we all love a good bit of cheese, but when done right, the darker takes can be incredibly satisfying for building up to the climactic scenes.

Don’t get me wrong, too much... and you’re just wading through non-stop angst fest (*cough DC cough*), but get the balance right, and you’re gold.

Regardless, the moment of clarity appears that puts everything in perspective – their loved ones, their job, what led them up to that single moment in time where everything has suddenly made horrible, bittersweet sense. And, generally, because people love a happy-ending, they discover what they can do to magically turn everything around at the last second, even when everything seems hopeless. Find a convenient weapon, scrounge up some last-minute resolve, save the day, get their romantic interests, learn a moral message blah blah blah.

For people in reality, it’s more often than not found it in the little things of everyday life, instead.

Staring out into the evening at sunset, for instance. Watching the colours bounce off the clouds and staining the gently churning masses of white and grey into a riot of pastels. Breathing in the still air as you watch the sunlight spilling across the horizon in a water colour wash, everything around you turning harsher in the waning light as the shadows stretch and warp across the world around you.

For some it could be walking along the beach, feeling the sand and stone, moist and coarse in turn, sinking and skittering into place beneath your feet. The rush of salt air through your hair, clinging to your skin and curling at the back of your throat. Listening to the dull, all encompassing roar of the water rushing in the riptide, watching as it swells, crashing against the rocks in large, unforgiving swathes of cloudy white and grey.

Maybe, it’s sitting and listening to the leaves shifting above your head, bird calls cutting through the peaceful white noise. The sun is peeking between the canopy leaves, brushing gently against your skin, and setting the undergrowth aglow in shafts of warm sunlight. Everything seems brighter, with flowers flourishing and the insects buzzing, going about their business. Sitting barefoot on the cool grass with shadows to hide under, a tug of the breeze pulling your hair every which way and flowing through the hairs on your arms.

It can be standing atop a hill, in blocky shoes that have begun to rub and too-big water proofs that let the damp in anyway. Clouds descending slowly down the mountain slide, engulfing everything and soaking you through to the bone; Everything suddenly becoming part of a murky haze, a mix of dark greens and peat air as you breath the still and heavy scent of ozone.

Perhaps in the middle of a crowded city, in amongst the comings and goings of everyone – with coats and bags and squeaky shoes, phones and camera’s and umbrella’s – all who rush past without a second glance. Listening to the babble of various languages, cursing, laughing, cars and music and chatter from every direction as your world is reduced to the stone steps you sit on, the warm drink in hand and the pigeons stalking about at your feet.

It’s the realisation that you can come and go, live your life however you want – you can bow to the pressures of people around you, live how arbitrary rules say you should, listen to your own fears and never truly live your life - but the sun has risen long before you were born and will continue to do so long after you die, too. Trends have come to life and died just as swift a death, attitudes have changed from decade to year to month, and in the long run none of It will inherently matter as much as you think it does at the time. The tides will endure, the winds will blow on and life and death will in turn continue, feeding off each other in the, to borrow a phrase, _circle of life~!_ Those grand ideas you dismissed sound more feasible, more important, along with the little things, like your family and friends.

You realise how fleeting it all is. How we are just a blip in existence of the universe, and how very small we really are.

I’d had several of these moments before; walking the dog in the park; a day trip to London; sat on a little beach just outside of Ramsay; looking up at the stars when camping in the middle of Wales. I sat and breathed and just existed in that existential moment, and didn’t worry about anything for once despite how frightening the whole concept was.

That being said - my own _fleeting_ life, however, had _never_ been made _more_ clear to me than when I was staring up at the elephantine sized, bloodshot eye of what appeared to be a very, _very_ angry mountain side.

Honestly, that wasn’t a sentence I ever thought I’d think.

There was a moment, as I made direct eye contact, where nothing happened.

I breathed in, rather shakily, lungs somewhat protesting.

I felt the sun against my back, burning through my t-shirt which was uncomfortably damp at the armpits; I felt the heat from the spider cracks on the ground, and where it was burning through the soles of my knock-off converse. The air vibrated gently with heat and too-bright light, dry and arid in my mouth as I tried to regulate my steadily rising sense of panic. A low current of breeze swept dust past my feet, catching at my bare shins and rocking the dry looking plants sticking from the cracks,  sending the leaves rattling.

The eye stared, quivering slightly, glassy and lined with burst blood vessels. The mountain side was large and imposing with deep seated cracks and a variety of browns and oranges mixed into the sediment sat around the eye, and looked like it would crumble at any second.

Saliva battled panic in my mouth as my heart began to rebel, feeling like someone had it in their fist and was slowly beginning to crush it, yanking it backwards towards my spine.

My stomach churned uncomfortably, and for a fleeting moment, I felt like I was going to be sick.

I was in a desert.

I have never been in a desert in my life. Where the fuck did a desert come from?

I lived in Britain for fucks sake. There were no bloody deserts on the Island – of that I was _very sure_. I had been in a _goddamned **McDonalds** before all this shit_.

But here I was, in the middle of the desert, ears burning in the sun and sweat trickling down my neck, staring down a giant crusty yellow eye and regretting the faint taste of Chicken Nuggets that my nausea was bringing back.

I remembered to breath out.

Sand and dirt cracked violently beneath my feet, bursting high into the air in showers of heat and chunks of cracked mud, knocking my balance out as if someone had swept a carpet out from beneath me. My glasses were ripped painfully off my face and went flying. The mountain let out an ear shattering shriek as my head made harsh impact with the ground, winding me.

There were drums in my ears, pounding against my skin and my head and fingertips started to pulse angrily; the floor was hard and stone ridden as the angry shrieking turned into an odd ringing noise, my back and lungs spasming painfully.

A giant shape thrust it’s way jerkily out from the rock in a mass of churning fur and sand, the shriek sounding something like a mix between a dying animal and a bellow of anger that set my teeth on edge and raised the hair all across my body. Boulders the size of a double decker bus went soaring, and I screamed so hard my voice cracked as one landed about two feet away from me with a very nasty sounding thud, the shock of it washing over me in a wave of dust and displaced air.

“NO!” bellowed the shape in a deafening screech, raw and furious as it hauled itself from inside the rock face, towering over the surrounding area. It quivered with rage through the dust cloud, taller than most of the city tower blocks I’d seen and looking like something out of Wrath of the Titans.

I screamed again, hands shaking in front of me.

“NO NO NONONONONO NO! NOT AGAIN!”

What the fuck was happening? I turned over and clawed at the dirt around me, slamming my hands around to find my glasses, only to come up with stones embedded in my palms and a rising sense of desperation.

I couldn’t see, and I was going to – those fucking rocks – oh my – oh my god I was going to die because a mountain exploded and some fucked up balrog or giant or whatever the fuck that wasn’t supposed to exist had me on it’s shit list and I couldn’t see properly, my eyes burning while trying to do the impossible and focus without my glasses.

I could also be crying. It was probably both.

“NO! NO! NO! YOU PIECES OF SHIT WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

Plastic hit my middle finger, inches away from the boulder – the fucking odds on that – and the next second they were back on my face as I spat out sand and the half a dead plant that had been blown onto my face, scrambling up, half falling over in the process as I started towards the glare of the horizon and the sand dunes in the distance, trying to remember through the sense of hysteria how to do long distance running.

Please don’t spot me, Please don’t spot me, _Please don’t fucking spot me_ \- I wasn’t staying there _what the fuck is happening oh my god_ \- There were more chunks of mountain that had landed out in the plain ahead of me that I could hide behind. Big and sturdy looking and I _could hide_. Sand started shifting beneath my feet, and I let out a moan of horror as it started shooting past me and began to rise into swarm like clouds in mid air, undulating towards the giant screaming mess behind me.

What the fuck was going on – _Sand didn’t do that normally_. Oh god I was going to die. What the fuck? What the fuck was this, the goddamned MUMMY?

Large, old looking Ionic columns started bursting out of the ground in front of me in blooms of sand that slowed in mid air, before joining it’s brethren in an _unnatural_ ascent towards the _giant thing_ behind me, scaring me shitless as I swerved – well, more like tripped over my own feet, to be honest – to avoid running into one. Dark shapes writhed over the chipped surface and down onto the ground, glowing as they shot towards the creature in long ribbons.

Oh god I’d found myself in that scene from Transformers hadn’t I, where that man gets turned into a mechanical scorpion’s shish kebab. I didn’t want to be a Kebab. _I DIDN’T EVEN LIKE KEBABS_.

“NOT AGAIN I CAN’T- I REFUSE- I’LL RIP YOU TO PIECES YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF MEAT-“

Something very heavy, much in the way that I imagined a skyscraper must feel like, slammed into the ground beside me and I let out a screech, jerking away from it in a full body spasm, tripping over my feet and sending me sprawling onto hot, hard dirt. My eyes were blurry, salt stinging down my cheeks, my breath coming in very short, panicky bursts as my chest seized up. It was giant paw, made up of a mass of angrily churning sand and several claws the size of an average two story house, gleaming violently in the burning sun, sinking several feet into the ground with little problem.

I didn’t want to die.

“YOU! THIS IS YOUR FAULT!”

Something slammed sideways into my ankles, sweeping me up off my feet as I let out a hysterical grunt. I was slammed rather painfully into the boulder, every dent and groove imprinting a map of bruises against my back, crushing my left wrist under my side as I was dragged along. I was screaming, very loudly, desperately trying to scramble away with hair in my mouth and limbs protesting at the movement. I’m _fairly_ sure I was babbling at this point in terror, but honestly, I’d like to see what you would do in this scenario.

I was ripped free from the rock, and then I was rising upside down, an iron band wrapped around my chest as my insides lurched and my ribs struggled to find the space to let my lungs expand.

“WORTHLESS SCUM – I WILL NOT BE TRAPPED INSIDE OF ONE OF YOU LITTLE BASTARDS AGAIN”

The world turned violently, up and down disappearing as I flew into the air. There was nothing below me or above me for a split second as I rose towards the sky, sand and debris rising with me. I spun, arms flailing, finding myself facing the oncoming wall of sand a split second before it hit me like concrete, and whimpered as the air was knocked out me and my abused muscles protested vehemently.

I couldn’t breathe.

Adrenaline was doing me favours, but I was never able to take much of a physical beating. I wasn’t goddamned Rambo, I was a university student who had anxiety attacks at the idea of going into staff rooms and flinched when anyone got angry. I felt the world turn again, and choked out a rather pained sob. My face throbbed, blood gushing from my nose and down my face in a warm spill. I could feel my chest spasm angrily every time I tried to breathe through my mouth, and my ankle was sending lightening down my leg.

And then my back was hitting the ground again, and it felt like my spine was trying to escape out of my front.

My lungs flexed uselessly as blood dripped down the left side of my face, muscles twitching and burning in pain as I finally came to a stop, the pain shorting out everything.

I couldn’t move, the pain burning through my muscles and bones.

Something thick, warm, and somewhat like Granite shifted under my back, and it was only through the blurring of my eyes that I saw the gleam of claws as a dark shape blotted out the sun. I managed to scream again, hoarse and pained, and shut my eyes as the paw came slamming down.

.

.

When I opened my eyes, it was to a woman’s face, inches from my own.

There was no giant paw, no sand, no ear-splitting voice yelling profanities.

No pain. My nose wasn’t bleeding. I could breathe without my ribs cracking in half.

I was… I was okay? What – what happened?

Several panicked voices barked something at each other in the background, rushing footsteps and equipment clanging as shapes moved in my peripheral vision. Had.. has someone got me? Who the hell could beat something like that? What did they do - Nuke it? Was I in hospital?

The woman let out a breathy laugh, and I stared at her, trying to get my mouth to work and trying to work out why she looked odd. And why she was two inches from my face.

She was clammy, I realised, and shaky, but her bronzed face lit up with a shaky smile when she caught my eye. Something touched my cheek and with a start, I realised it was a finger, with a palm attached that looked larger than my upper torso, and was pressed up along my side.

I… what? What?

Teeth appeared in her smile, and my skin began to heat where the hand was, like super hot air was soaking into the surface. I cried out, my muscles suddenly feeling every inch of that beating, but my voice was raw and high, my throat tearing slightly at the sensation. I tried to move away but nothing responded, my limbs trapped in a blanket and my muscles weak, abused and unresponsive. It become almost unbearable, pushing its way through my arms and chest in a wild scorching sensation, wrapping around my organs in a vice, sinking into my bones – and suddenly it stopped, curling in my insides, and fading as if it had never happened at all.  

The woman smiled more warmly, panting even harsher than before, and whispered something into the side of my head, something in a language I didn’t know. She breathed harshly, wetly, pressing her lips to my forehead before leaning back slightly, cracking an eye open to look at me as I stared at her, inwardly hysterical.

She wasn’t right. This wasn’t right. There was something wrong with her, with me, with everything here. As if to prove my point, what sounded like a heart monitor started going berserk in the background, and voices raised in that unknown language, babbling frantically to one another.

A familiar shriek echoed, deep in the back of my head, loud enough to pierce the back of my skull. It was angry and choked, cracking and rising in volume until I couldn’t hear the monitor, couldn’t hear the people running back and to. I stared at the woman, watching as her eyelids flickered with tears spilling over, mouthing something, looking at me with the most heartfelt expression I’ve ever seen in my life.

I stared at her as she slumped fully this time, hands slackening and features falling in time to the shrieking in my head reaching a fever pitch, and I did the only thing I could as I watched her body fall suddenly still, as I watched her die.

I started crying.

.

.

_I was named Sanghā, by my mother, for her family. Not my father’s side, which is nice, as my father’s legacy dominated the rest of my life._

_Apparently, it’s meaning was something about spiritual understanding in Buddhism. Or something to do with it, at least. It was never fully explained to me, past the idea that I was named it with the hopes that I would gain my own spiritual understanding of life to help me cope with the shit show that was about to unfold._

_And then corrected by others, saying that it was given to me in the greatest sense of irony, to haunt me with something I would never achieve in life, her last act of resentment towards the child that took her life. That it was a foreign name, one not even from within the borders of Hijō ni, as if it was insult to injury._

_As if my mother’s culture was something to be ashamed of._

_Personally I thought that was scraping the barrel a bit, but, what do I know, right?_

_My mother died on the operating table that day after being sent to slaughter by the Primary Council. By the time my father found out, it was half-way through the procedure and to stop would have been to kill both of us and possibly everyone else within a radius of a mile._

_So instead, I lose my freedom, my peace of mind and my family, in one night._

_._

_._

I was taken away by a man with a tired, albeit relatively nice face and head full of shaggy red hair. He had bags under his eyes and appeared to be crying, albeit much more stoically than I was. All that came from my mouth were high pitched wails, piercing and highly appropriate given my mother had just died.

But also not ignoring the fact that I had just been reborn and had a psycho voice inside of me. Because, there’s always that little tid-bit.

“ARHHHH – NO! NO! FUCK!”

The problem is, I thought I was fully losing it. There was this voice in the back of my head that wasn’t insecurity or my own inside voice, and instead it shouted and screamed and rattled my head _constantly_. And I mean constantly.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRHRHGHGHHHHHHHHH”

Bestial roars that only you can hear, echoing angrily in the back of your head tend to upset the balance a little bit, and honestly – I freaked the fuck out. I didn’t settle, I couldn’t sleep – ever time I tried the voice came back shrieking at the top of it’s lungs, yelling about ripping me limb from limb.

I mean, you don’t get voices in the back of your head. Your own voice, maybe, if you have mental health problems or a personality disorder or something like that. But someone else’s? That tends to a be sign of insanity, doesn’t it? So I proceeded to panic. I didn’t think it would reach that point. _I didn’t_ _want to be that far gone_. I struggled enough with trying to cope with my original shit – I didn’t need anthropomorphic mountain visions fucking me up this badly.

So, unfortunately for crying man, who took me into a room with what looked like a truly fearsome amount of paper-work scattered everywhere and a single potted plant, I didn’t give him much respite over the next few hours. He broke down, occasionally, when my voice was recovering, letting out quiet, heartbroken gasps and uncomfortable sounding coughs,  and in-between I let my displeasure of this twisted voice in the back of my head be known while he attempted to calm me rather exhaustedly.

“I’M GOING TO RIP YOUR HEAD FROM YOUR SHOULDERS JUST YOU WAIT FLESH BAG!”

After a while I began to tune the voice out, with varying degrees of success, too exhausted to do any differently. It was with the aggressively terrifying commentary listing all the ways it would hurt me – which I didn’t take well, I’d like to add – that the door opened and in walked my mother.

Wait.

She stopped, feet away, and her face warped angrily, body language changing drastically.

Oh, it was a man, I thought distantly, coasting on the screaming. And then the man joined in, furiously yelling with hand gestures and tears, ripping into red haired man who was holding me, a finger in my hands.

And, it was too much. Too much yelling, too much screaming. A lady, my mother, had died back there and there was a voice in the back of my head, and I hated it all. I hated it, and I wanted to go home.

“YES! DO THAT! RIP AND TEAR AND CRUSH-“

Something tugged, deep within my gut and under the surface of my skin, and I could … I could _feel_ it, suddenly. Lining the walls, the floor. Particles hidden in the carpet, in the crying mans hair, all throughout his clothes, floating in the air like possessed dust as I cried big fat, exhausted tears.

“IT’LL BE SO EASY – THESE BASTARDS HAVE TAKEN EVERYTHING FROM ME – FROM YOU!”

The man was reaching a fever pitch, angry and raw sounding, having moved over to slam his hands down on the desk between us and him, and the crying man was holding me tightly, spitting back with words I couldn’t comprehend but could understand the tone behind them easily enough, and there was sand under the desk and turning in thin clouds in the air like a murmur of starlings, undulating and angry-

“JUST LET GO, I’LL DO THE REST – I CAN CRUSH THEM I CAN MAKE THEM HURT I CAN MAKE THEM PAY ALL OF THEM ALL OF THOSE BUGS-“

I…

I couldn’t…

A gaping maw, sand dripping off like waterfalls – an angry, piercing yellow eye – there was so much anger, so much rage burning a hole through my sternum – giant, razor sharp paws clawing their way past the edges of something and it was going to rip them to pieces, sand curling around their arms and legs and head and pulling, tearing at tendons and skin and muscles, curling in the blood, creating waterfalls of their own, revelling in the grit and the heat of the carnage, my own hands covered in blood, with hands full of half rotten organs, smiling through the flies and the smell and the blood on my face and in my mouth-

NO.

I felt my hands shaking despite being anchored to the crying mans hand, who was looking at me now in a healthy state of alarm. The other man had a hand braced on his shoulder, peering down at me in a way that suggested he was three seconds away from snatching me out of the others’ arms, and was making half aborted soothing noises and… I couldn’t let the voice do that.

God I was going to be sick.

That… I couldn’t let it do that. I couldn’t let it kill them, and the voice was in me and it was me and oh my god it was me the sand I can feel the sand and that lady is dead and I’ve broken, haven’t I, I’ve gone and I’m going to turn into a mass murderer via fucking possessed sand and what did I ever do to deserve this-

“YOU?! YOU!? WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU?! I’VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR DECADES YOU IMPERTINENT SHIT AND YOU’RE ASKING WHAT YOU DID? I’M GOING TO CRUSH YOU UNTIL THERE’S NOTHING LEFT AHHHHHHHHR”

-and it. wouldn’t. stop. Screaming. And I can feel the sand and I can’t control it and the voice has the sand and what do I do Its going its going to hurt people and oh god someone help me please-

.

.

Rasa, the red haired crying man, was the Kazekage. That was someone important, apparently, given the amount of times someone appeared to talk to him, with more files and paperwork. I later learned that he was the military leader of an entire desert fortress of mystical, cynical people with swords.

So there’s that.

He wasn’t short, but he wasn’t especially tall either. He had strong hands, worn, and hardened by his life, with skin weathered by the sun, and wore a fair amount of what looked like high quality Gold jewellery. He was also my father, apparently.

Yashamaru, the angry man who looked like my mother, was my uncle. He ended up whisking me away, making cooing noises and being generally very comforting until I managed to get my crying under control. There was a lot of painful hiccupping involved, let me tell you. He was a bit of a paler colour, like my mother had been, and talked in yet another language when we were alone, which is nice and all, but I can barely keep track of one.

Multicultural, evidently, wherever this was.

Yashamaru was nice, though. He seemed sad, angrily so, and a bit nervous – I don’t blame him, really, given the sand and the voice and _everything_ – but he was also very tender. He took me away from Rasa, who had buried his hands in his eyes, pushing with the heel of his palm into his skull as if he could erase the past day by sheer force of will. He took me, after barging into an office with a woman who very hesitantly checked me over and after asking a volley of questions, to a small house with rather hardy looking plants sitting in pots outside.

It was warm stucco walls with light blue Moroccan style tilework along the floor, decorative arches for doorways and plants poking out from everywhere. There were worn looking books with post-it-notes stuck out in every direction on piles on the coffee table, and thick, hardy looking woven throws over seats.

All across the walls hung shitty quality pictures of a compound building somewhere, some showing  a waterfall, others what looked like rice fields, and a bunch of green, ginger and blonde haired people stood in all of them, pulling cheesy faces.

This was his home.

This was where Yashamaru, who settled on the patched sofa with me in his arms, told me his real name.

“Yakshā,” he said, accent curling around the world as he pointed to himself, looking rather distraught, “Yakshā.”

His chin was trembling, jaw clenching slightly as he fought, but he reached over and brought a picture frame, turning it so I could see and said, “Karuhā,” before bursting into hideous tears, bringing me up and burying my face in his neck as he shuddered.

Karuhā.

Karura.

My mother. Rasa’s wife. His sister, who had just died.

So I started crying too.

.

.

 _This is my story, and I’m sorry to say it starts with a tragedy_.

.

.


End file.
